Sunday, 4 April 2010

Cells in a dish, science on a plate

The Times, March 26, 2010

“One of the key things of this decade — and I think it will prove to be one of the key things of this century — is the ability to give tissue cells from adults the characteristics of embryo stem cells,” says Sir Ian Wilmut, the scientist who cloned Dolly the sheep. “In the long run they will be used for cell therapy but the immediate interest is in using them to study diseases. If you have a family where you have one or two generations who have had MND, then it is very likely that it is inherited — so you don’t need to know the mutation that causes the disease in order to study it.

“For the first time this offers exactly what we were wanting — cells in a dish, which are equivalent to a person with an inherited disease, and that’s the trick you get from IPS.”

Without doubt, one of the most influential British scientists of his generation - there's more from Sir Ian Wilmut here: Stem Cells.

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About Me

I freelanced for a year, before accepting a contract with The Times in 2008. Previously I was Scottish features editor of the Sunday Times for about three and half years and prior to that I worked for five years for the Scotsman newspaper, where I wrote news, features, sport, leaders, opinion and diary pieces.
In a previous life I worked as a writer and researcher in a variety of fields including commerical video and museum design. I copy-edited the displays for the Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and researched and wrote the Arsenal FC museum at Highbury stadium in London. I am a prize-winning history graduate of Edinburgh University.

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I have had published work commissioned by The Washington Post, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Irish Times, The Cape Argus, the Independent on Sunday, Scotland on Sunday, the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, the Scotsman and the Sunday Herald.